Dreams of Destiny
by Laicamiel
Summary: Genvieve, a Beauxbatons professor with the Sight, is having strange dreams. Destiny seems to be guiding her towards a mysterious lost man...
1. Heavy Thoughts

**AN**: This is my first attempt at fan fiction. Here's to my favourite character, Sirius, who will show up in the next chapter. He's the other main character. I have the second chapter written and ready to upload, but I want to get some feedback on this one first. I welcome praise and constructive criticism. If you notice any errors, grammatical or factual, let me know. I am writing this to be consistent with the canon, but I don't own any of the books for reference. So, my memory might fail me once in a while. Just give a poke! Thanks to all for reading. :o)  
  
Here's the requisite disclaimer (totally unnecessary if you ask me – even my Pakistani grandmother knows who wrote Harry Potter): I own the parts that I made up, and unfortunately have no claim whatsoever on Sirius. Sigh.

**1one**

She sat alone in her office long after the other professors had retired to their rooms for the night, marking essays from her second-year students. Sighing, she put her quill aside and took off her rectangular glasses, rubbing her hand over her eyes in a weary gesture. In the dim light, she contemplated the change that had come over her old _alma mater_, seemingly so quickly. It had crept upon them on silent feet, sneakily, just like the man who had caused it. If one could call him a man.

_Voldemort_. She leaned back in her chair, a frown creasing her smooth brow. The name did not intimidate her like it did her colleagues. To be honest, she found it rather ridiculous. She refused to call him He-Who-Must- Not-Be-Named like her colleagues. It was a foolish habit, and it was psychologically damaging. It showed fear, and allowed him a certain amount of control, however small. Admittedly, they had much worse things to worry about from the Dark Lord these days; but it seemed even more important then that they milk their advantages as much as possible. Things were getting bleaker with the passage of every day.

She shivered, though the room was warm, glancing outside at the ice and snow glittering on the trees in the moonlight. Her tower window looked out onto the reaching bare branches that crowned the vast forest. At one time it had possessed a name, though she no longer remembered it; now it was just known as _la Foret Mechant_. The Mean Forest. It sounded almost comical in English, but it was a dark place, especially at this time of year, when the skeletal black trees were not even softened by foliage. _La Foret Mechant_ was forbidden for a reason. She grimaced. Something else that had changed over the last few years at Beauxbatons.

When she had been a student, there was nothing more sinister about it than some slightly malicious faeries that liked to play tricks on unsuspecting teenagers who ventured into the woods for the thrill of the prohibited. She grinned as she recalled a particular incident from her third year. Emile Bruneau had been _en l'hopital_ for a week with ivy growing out of his ears. The poor man had never lived it down.

She sobered, coming back to the matter that had interrupted her work. Things were getting worse. She no longer knew which of the other professors could be trusted. The darkness was rising faster than she had expected it to. Lately her Sight had been failing too; perhaps she was losing her gift as she got older? It was not an unknown occurrence, though it was rare. The only thing she had seen in the last few weeks was a recurring vague dream that was oddly confusing and distressing. For once she had no idea what it meant, although she had the strong feeling it was important.

She returned her gaze to the papers on her desk and bent over her marking again, stopping only when the words began to blur before her eyes. She got up, exhausted, and put everything away. Teaching was beginning to seem like an endless Mount Everest of paperwork, devoid of the joys for which she had chosen her profession in her idealistic days – the look on a student's face when he finally understood an idea, the inquisitive energy in a child's eyes that always increased her own enthusiasm for learning, the happy chatter of young voices in the morning as they talked about trivial issues that gave her a break from her own troubles, of which there were many.

But in the last year, even the children had lost their innocence. Their previously carefree expressions had become grave and uncertain. Her classes were more often than not quiet and subdued; she could not remember the last time she had shushed them.

A sudden ire rose in her as she contemplated her children, as she thought of them. What has he done to _mes enfants_? She thought angrily. _Batarde_. She felt like seeking him out and giving that Volde_merde_ a piece of her mind that he would not forget. She smiled wryly at herself. _You're losing it, Genvieve, finalement_. Shaking her head, she extinguished the lights with a wave of her wand and left for her chambers.


	2. Kaleidescope

Blindingly obvious disclaimer: I do not claim to own or have any rights to any of the Harry Potter paraphernalia, all of which belong exclusively to You-Know-Who. :o)

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_**2two**_

Sirius Black was in a swirling vortex of blinding colour, falling, twisting. He couldn't tell which way was up, his head spinning and his stomach rolling dangerously.

Definitely exactly what he needed at the moment.

He had no idea how long he had been this roiling hell; it could have been five minutes, or a week. The time was just as blurred as the churning colours that surrounded him. He closed his eyes to spare his stomach at least the dizzying view. When he opened them again, feeling himself slowing down, he saw that there was an open path kaleidoscoping in front of him.

The momentary reprieve was obviously far too pleasant, and he plunged headlong into the path, his body hurtling forward against his will.

He realized suddenly that he couldn't feel his limbs; with a panicky feeling, he also found himself unable to smell or hear anything. It also occurred to him that while he had been in momentary darkness just now, he had not actually closed his eyes, because he could not sense his eyelids. It was more like he willed not to see anything, without really thinking about it.

He "looked" down at himself, and thought about fainting.

_No body. I have no body. _He tried screaming, but of course nothing happened.

Unable to process this new bit of information at the moment, he turned his attention back to the vortex he was passing through. It seemed to end in an advancing black pinpoint in the distance. It came rushing toward him, and then—he was within it.

For a moment all was pitch black, and then a dim grey light started to fill the space around him from no source that he could see.

Sirius fell.

He grunted and opened his eyes—_I have eyes!_—and realized his body was back, though it was a little uncooperative yet. "Nice of you to join me again," he growled at it hoarsely. Standing up slowly, he looked around and noticed that he was not alone. Several figures were in various postures all around him, sitting, standing, or gesturing to each other.

He glanced at one such pair closely. They seemed to be having an intense conversation without words. They were also translucent. _Oh, give me a blooming break._ He glanced at himself again, cursing his body's sudden whimsical tendency to appear and disappear without his knowledge, and confirmed his suspicions. He too was silvery and insubstantial. _I look like Nearly-Bloody-Headless Nick,_ he thought darkly.

_Who is Nearly Bloody Headless Nick, if I might be so rude as to inquire?_ A polite voice questioned from inside his head.

Starting violently, he spun around, looking for the source of the voice. An old man with a bald head and a wispy beard smiled and waved at him. Sirius blinked. _You? You're talking to me—telepathically? _He responded mentally, not really expecting an answer. After all, telepathy is the stuff of science fiction nov—

_Benedict Adkins, nice to meet you. Yes, though I didn't mean to intrude on your thoughts. You were just sending them out so vehemently._ Sirius gaped. _New here, I presume?_ Sirius nodded. _Yes well, it does take a while to become...acclimated. Don't be alarmed._

Sirius sighed heavily and sat down hard on the floor.


	3. Sucked In

Here it is once again, folks...don't have delusions about owning the goods.

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_**3three**_

_Darkness was all around her._

_Above, below, behind, so thick it felt like it was making its way through her open mouth and down her throat to suffocate her panicky breaths. Genvieve felt like she had been walking forever. Searching for something unknown, but with the knowledge that when she found it, everything would be all right. For once._

_Suddenly she saw it in front of her, a tiny bright circle that reminded her of a rotating prism refracting light into all of its colours. The faint light allowed her to see the edges of the narrow corridor she had already known she was in. She got close enough to see the individual colours of the light, red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet, each making its slow orbit. ROY G BIV. She had learned the wavelength order in elementary school, and was surprised to see it faithfully represented here, wherever here was._

_Disconcerted at the random scientific knowledge popping into her mind out of nowhere, she shook her head to clear it._

_She was almost upon the swirling colours now, and a sudden deep longing came over her, banishing rational thought and filling her with unbearable sadness. She went nearer to it, forcing her reluctant feet forward, ignoring her body's instinctive urge to flee, pushing away in irritation the warning voice that that whispered in her head, telling her to turn around, walk away before it was too late._

_She was drawn to it almost in a trance, focusing only on the certainty that beyond the pretty turning kaleidoscope lay what she was searching for if only she could reach out and grab it. She raised her arm and moved it slowly forward, pausing when her fingertips were a hair's breadth from the glowing surface._

_Closing her eyes, she braced herself for what was coming and plunged her hand in up to her wrist._

_She opened her eyes in surprise. Whatever she had expected, it wasn't this...nothing. It was as if her hand no longer existed. She swallowed at the sensation, but didn't remove her hand, still enthralled somehow. Almost there—she was inches away, could feel it. Whatever—or whoever—she needed to find was almost within her grasp. She leaned forward, pushing her arm in up to her elbow._

_She felt a sudden sucking on her arm, pulling her in farther, but with an eerie lack of sensation. She felt a fleeting second of panic, then stumbled, losing her balance. She fell headlong into the swimming colours, down, down, losing her body, closing her eyes at the onslaught of colour, falling free with an unknown destination..._

She woke with another pounding headache.

She always got them after she looked through her inner eye; the more stressful the vision, the worse her head hurt. What frightened her about this one was the fact that she had had absolutely no idea while she was dreaming that she was experiencing a vision. Learning to recognize the signs of prophecy, whether waking or dreaming, and how to keep a small corner of the mind rooted in reality, were the first things a novice learned when the Sight was discovered in her.

If a Seer could not do this, there was a high risk of her "going inward", never returning from the trancelike state of vision. It was a terrifying sight, a Seer that had gone inward; the blank face and empty eyes were haunting. It was similar to seeing someone who had been Kissed by a dementor, except that their soul hadn't been sucked out; it was just—gone.

She had come dangerously close to letting the vision take her over, almost losing herself in it. It had enveloped her, hypnotized her, like the swirling portal itself; she had lost her awareness of her own identity, of reality. It had never happened to her before, and shouldn't now; she was a Seer of long experience, mature and proficient in her craft. She was disturbed and frightened by this new development.

She smiled wryly. _Well, I was wondering if I losing my gift. Apparently not. _This was the strongest vision she had had in months, the only one recently other than that recurring vague dream she had been having lately. She still hadn't figured out what that one meant.

Genvieve sighed and turned over in bed, hoping in vain for a few more hours of sleep. She certainly had plenty of thoughts to keep her occupied until dawn.

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Hey guys! Please review, I haven't gotten any for this story yet and I don't think I'll post any more chapters till I get just one. I mean, how will I know you're reading it and possibly want more if you don't give me a heads up? :o) 


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